


Geata Rionnag SG-1

by Asterekmess (Livinginfictions)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Stargate Fusion, Alternate Universe - Stargate SG-1, Astrophysicist Erica Reyes, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Derek and Peter Aren't Related, Episode: s01e01-02 Children of the Gods, Gaelic Language, Gen, Genius Stiles Stilinski, Mentioned Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Pagan Gods, Polyglot Derek Hale, Polyglot Stiles Stilinski, Possibly Pre-Slash, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23123884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livinginfictions/pseuds/Asterekmess
Summary: A year and a half ago, Stiles Stilinski chose to stay behind on an alien planet while the rest of his team returned home through the Stargate, with promises to never return. Now, they're back, and they want his help. When his wife and sister-in-law are taken by a Goa'uld posing as a Goddess, he must try and get them back before their minds are stolen in order to make them slaves to The Huntress.
Relationships: Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Isaac Lahey & Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski/Original Female Character(s), Vernon Boyd & Erica Reyes & Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 13
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is a rewrite of the first episode of Stargate SG-1, using Teen Wolf characters. I was rewatching this show and couldn't stop picturing Stiles and Boyd and Erica in the scenes.  
Because so much of beginning of SG-1 is about Egyptain mythology and people of Egyptian descent, I knew I couldn't make a rewrite using TW characters and be appropriately respectful, so I re-imagined the story of their first Stargate exploration using a mixture of Celtic, Irish, and a bit of German mythology. Rather than try to come up with my own language, I used Gaelic and Welsh as my languages. Most everything in italics is being spoken in another language.  
This was just a bit of fun for me, and I hope you like it.

“_Come look! _Stiles,_ come see!_”

Stiles continued to squint at his loom, trying to remember which part of the pattern he was supposed to be on. Weaving was great for dealing with his ADHD without medication, but only when he caught a rhythm. Every time he thought too hard about it, it was like all his skill disappeared. With the suns going down, he was running out of working time. “What is it_, _Cathal?”

“Stiles!” Cathal cried again.

Stiles looked up from his weave to see Cathal running down the path with a torch, his already long hair sticking out behind him like he’d dipped it in wax and his free arm waving wildly. “Cathal?” he asked. “_What’s wrong?_”

Skidding to a stop, Cathal began to tug on Stiles’ brat, pulling the fabric off balance on his body. “_Come! It’s the geata rionnag!_”

Immediately, Stiles rose to his bare feet in the grass. “The Stargate? _What happened?_”

_“Something came through!”_ Cathal shouted, yanking again on Stiles’ cloak. “_It hit _Aoibhe_ right in the head! Hurry up!_”

Spinning around, Stiles searched the small area around his weaving supplies for his sandals, not stupid enough to go running barefoot across the moor that the Stargate sat in the middle of. “Orla, _mo ghaol_, _where are my shoes? _Cathal, _is _Aoibhe_ hurt?_”

Cathal rolled his head and bounced on the toes of his boots. “_No. Come look! She won’t give it to us!” _He turned around and ran back the way he’d come, nearly bashing into a woman exiting her house.

Stiles couldn’t believe he’d managed to lose his damn sandals when the Stargate had been activated for the first time in a year and a half. There was no way of knowing who it could be, whether General Raphael had decided to test if he’d destroyed it, or if someone even more dangerous had sent something through.

From the inside of their roundhouse, there was the jingle of bells, then Orlaith came into view, already pulling her brat over her shoulders and pinning it with her broach. “_Here_, Stiles_. You always put them here.”_ She pointed down at the doorway.

Sure enough, Stiles’ sandals were sitting beside it. He padded over and reached out to finger Orla’s tunic sleeve, momentarily forgetting his rush. “_Mo ghaol ort._”

“I love you too,” Orla said, much smoother than the first time she’d tried it, barely tripping over the English words. “_Now, put your shoes on, and we’ll go._”

Stiles scrambled to get his sandals wrapped over his feet, listening to Orla laugh and ogle him as he bent over. With every step, the bells sewn into her tunic trim jingled gently, like Christmas all year long. More bells were twined into her hair, but they didn’t make much sound.

They reached the Stargate hand in hand, Stiles carrying a torch, to see it surrounded by the children of the tribe, shoving and yelling and pointing at something in the center of them.

Stiles ran forward. “_Sguir! Sguir! Come away from there!_”

As the huddle slowly dissipated, a small, umber-skinned girl shuffled over from the center of the group with something artificially white in her hand. Aoibhe grinned at him and held it out. “_It hit me when it came through, so I got to hold it. It looks like yours._”

“_Like my what?_” Stiles asked, reaching out to pull the item from her fingers. It was a pill bottle. With his name on it. Someone had tossed a bottle of Adderall prescribed to him through the Stargate.

With a little whoop of joy, Stiles popped open the bottle and pulled one pill out, swallowing it dry. “It’s Boyd, it has to be. Orla, honey, will you get me a bag and a piece of charcoal?”

He looked over at Orla when she didn’t respond or move, and she smiled at him, tapping her lips. “_I can’t understand you, mo ghaol_.”

“_Would you get me a bag and a piece of charcoal?_” Stiles repeated, grinning sheepishly.

After emptying the pills into a leather bag for safekeeping, Stiles pulled the label off the bottle and scribbled with his tiny stick of charcoal on the plastic in the light of the torch.

_Thanks. Send more_.

Stepping over to the dialing station, he punched in the coordinates for Earth and watched the center of the massive circle explode outward in a burst of blue, then settle into a glowing disk. It looked like a vertical pool of water, with spider cracks of light refractions over a dozen shades of blue. Rather than risk going all the way through, he just tossed the bottle back into it and waited for the portal to close.

“_Are they coming back?_” Orla asked. “_Or are they just being kind?_”

Stiles shrugged, pulling her in for a kiss on the forehead and a hug. He’d never really imagined himself to be the marrying type, but having Orla in his arms had felt right since the first night he held her hand and she led him to the cairn near the Stargate. Reading and writing may have been banned for the people of Saoghal but Orlaith had known just enough to show him the stone tablets buried within the massive rock pile that not only held the right sequence of symbols for him to send Boyd and the rest of the soldiers through, but hundreds more lists of coordinates.

Calling out to Cathal, the eldest of the teens and kids still milling around in the dark, Stiles said, “_We’ll need to stay here to see if someone comes through.”_

As if reading his mind, Cathal nodded and turned to the others, beginning to organize them into retrieving a tent for Stiles and Orlaith to stay in for the night, and ordering the oldest teens back to their positions for the night watch shift.

Since the day Boyd and the others had left, they’d been careful to have people on watch at all hours, carefully toting the guns left behind. Stiles could only be grateful that the advanced weaponry hadn’t been of much interest to Orla’s people. Though he knew the Celts on Earth warred with each other often, thousands of years under the painful reign of a vengeful god had united the people of Saoghal, rather than dividing them. The one time someone tried to go hunting with a gun, they were distraught that the bullet had tainted the meat around it, and they’d left the guns near the Stargate since then.

— 

It took until the next evening for anything to happen. As soon as the ground began to shake, Stiles was shoved back with Orla toward a mound specially made for hiding behind. He ducked down, pulling Orla into his arms until he had to spit some of her long red hair out of his mouth, and listened to the click of weapons being aimed toward the portal.

They popped through one at a time, stumbling on the worn stone steps. Peeking just over the mound, Stiles recognized two of them immediately. Greenburg and Dunbar were wearing camouflage uniforms in a much darker color than the ones they came with a year ago, much more suited to blending in with the dark, wet ground of the moor. His first instinct was to stand and greet them, but they were carrying more guns and were clearly on the offensive at being surrounded. A moment later, another person came through, paler than milk and bowled over as though they’d been thrown through the portal. They dropped to the ground, heedless of the danger they were in. Clearly not someone who’d used the Stargate before.

Only when the last person had come through and the portal had closed, did Stiles disentangle himself from Orla and rise. “_Sguir! Sguir._ _They are friends._”

He stepped around the mound and up toward the soldiers, keeping eye contact with the black man in a Colonel uniform. “Hey, Boyd. Welcome back.”

Though Stiles had assumed he would be happy to see Boyd, or really, anyone from Earth at all, he couldn’t control the raising of his hackles. They weren’t supposed to be here, let alone carrying more weapons as though they expected a fight. Saoghal was peaceful and there’d been no visits from the Cŵn Annwn since they’d blown up Gwyn ap Nudd’s ship. So what had prompted the visit?

Boyd didn’t so much as look at Stiles, his eyes focused over Stiles’ shoulder. With a rare smile, he pushed past and swept Aoibhe up into his arms, twirling her while she giggled. “Boyd! Boyd!”

On their first visit, Aoibhe had latched onto Boyd like a limpet, and for some reason Boyd had let her. She was technically Stiles’ little sister now, the foster child of Orla’s father. There wasn’t a week that went by that she didn’t find some way to bring Boyd into the conversation, speaking of him in same way she did her long lost father.

The tension in the air broke like a wave and snickers and conversation started up as Stiles’ people realized they were safe.

Still holding Aoibhe up, Boyd turned finally and nodded. “How are you, Stiles?”

“Good. You?” Stiles crossed his arms over his chest, fighting the urge to back up again. He liked Boyd, for all that he was way too serious and military to boot, but him being on Saoghal couldn’t be good.

“Much better now that I know everybody’s okay.”

Stepping away from their own little group of admirers, Greenburg and Dunbar tipped their helmets Stiles’ way. “Greetings from Earth, Stilinski.”

Stiles nodded, trying not to grimace. “Hello, Greenburg.”

“Brought you a little something,” Dunbar said. He passed over another white bottle of Adderall. It was the easiest two month supply Stiles’d ever gotten.

“Dunbar,” Stiles acknowledged, tucking the bottle into the pouch he’d hooked on his belt. Neither of them had been particularly nice to him during their first journey, but Orla had teased him enough about his grudge holding ability that he liked to think he was over it.

Speak of an angel and in she walks. “Stiles,” Orla called, padding to his side and tucking herself under his left shoulder. As her arms wrapped around his waist, Stiles could help squeezing her cloak with relief. It was easier to have her around.

“Good to see you again, Orla,” Boyd said, reaching out to shake her hand. She grasped Boyd’s wrist, rather than his hand and squeezed, before letting go. Not quite a shake, but not quite the arm clasping Stiles was now used to.

He translated Boyd’s greeting to Orla, then her response back to Boyd.

“I’m surprised they don’t know more English by now,” Greenburg observed. “And you’ve gone practically native. Nice dress.”

“And I love the hair,” Dunbar added.

Stiles snorted. “This is their world, Greenburg, why would I teach them a language only I speak? And by the way, you’re the one who looks weird here, wearing pants.” At the second comment, Stiles could only shake his hair and grin.

It’d already been below his ears when he’d arrived, since before the Air Force swept him up, he’d been fresh out of grad school and unable to afford even a haircut. After a year and a half on Saoghal though, it was down to his shoulders, and since he refused to use limewater to slick it back and harden it like the other men did, or shave it into a bowl cut like their few warriors, Orla had insisted on braiding it. Nothing too fancy, since it wasn’t long enough, but still. He had braids keeping the hair around his eyes out of the way, and few more small ones around the back, holding feathers and beads in.

Greenburg, looked down at his getup, then around at the men and women in tunics and cloaks. “Touche.”

As Orla huddled close, she laughed. She’d always been good at reading the emotion in Stiles’ voice, even if she couldn’t understand his English. “Touche,” she repeated in a thick brogue.

Smiling a little more genuinely, Stiles squeezed Orla again. “I knew you’d have to tell them eventually about us still being here.”

Boyd nodded. “Yeah. Why the militia on your side though? Something else come through?”

“No, we’re just taking precautions, why?” Stiles asked.

“Amazing,” came a voice from the side. Stiles turned to see the third member, the one who’d fallen down, running her hands over the dialing station. “This is what was missing from the dig at Ardgroom.”

Stiles nearly reached out to stop her, but she pulled her hands away before he’d even twitched. Unclipping her helmet, she laughed. “This was how they controlled it. It took us fifteen years and three supercomputers for us to jerry rig a system for the gate on Earth.”

A single glance at Boyd told Stiles what he needed to know. She was new, and she was a scientist. Stiles knew from experience that Boyd wasn’t a huge fan of “dweebs.” He would feel bad for her if she weren’t currently pawing at the dialing station. If she pressed the wrong buttons…

“Captain?” Boyd said.

“Look how small it is! It’s adorable.” The woman laughed again.

“Captain!”

She looked up, and stepped away from the station toward Stiles and Boyd. With a nod at Boyd, she held a hand out to Stiles. “Doctor Stilinski, right?”

A little hesitant to let go of Orla, who was currently keeping his vibrating to a minimum, even with his beloved Adderall in his system, Stiles took her hand slowly.

“I’m Doctor Erica Reyes.”

It was one thing for Boyd, Greenburg, and Dunbar to come through. But Boyd had promised Stiles he would get them to shut down the gate for good on their end, and now they were bringing more people through it? “What’s going on, Boyd?”

Boyd sighed and unclipped his own helmet. “Six hostile aliens came through the Stargate on Earth. Four people are dead, one’s missing.”

“One of them looked like Gwyn ap Nudd, Stiles,” said Dunbar.

Though the majority of the people around them couldn’t understand what was being said, they all knew the name Gwyn ap Nudd, and the whisperings increased in volume. Orla was the one to turn and cry, “_Tost! Mas e do thoil e! Tost!_” She leaned into Stiles. “_What is going on?”_

Rather than answer her, Stiles shook his head at Boyd. “They didn’t come from here. The boys take shifts guarding it, thirty-six hours a day, every day. We’d know if they came through here.” He looked down at Orla. “_There were _Cŵn Annwn_ that went to Earth._”

Boyd frowned. “They had to come from somewhere, Stiles. I need to look around.”

Gritting his teeth, Stiles tried to project the appropriate hospitality for his people. “I refuse to get everyone upset over this, Boyd. I can help you find out who this person was, but it’ll have to wait until after our evening meal. Would you like to join us?”

Though Boyd just scowled, Dr. Reyes looked ecstatic at the idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although my goal is for this to be easily understood without needing to know what the Gaelic lines within it mean, I felt it was only right to give a sort of translation. Gaelic is _not_ a language i'm super familiar with, so the tidbits of it that I use in this were pulled from the website [LearnGaelic](https://learngaelic.scot/). It has a really useful dictionary, and I did my best to match up what I wanted to say. If anyone's interested in learning this beautiful language, please go look, they've got amazing free courses.  
_geata rionnag_: Star Gate  
_mo ghaol_: My love  
_Mo ghaol ort_: I love you  
_Sguir_: Stop  
_Tost_: Silence  
_Mas e do thoil e_: Please


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a pretty short fic, and the chapters are also pretty short, so I'm just gonna update every other day.

There were a lot of things that Stiles did within their tribe that got him teased. Orla liked to call him a druid, because he knew how to read and write the runes that used to be their language, and because he was absolutely useless at things like hunting. Instead, he spent his time weaving and teaching and learning from the _actual_ druids of the tribe, those that had verbally recorded what little history was allowed.

One thing Orla wouldn’t let him do, was cook. Once he’d tasted her food, he was happy to leave her to it. Each time she made something, she brought a bite to him for tasting, laughing when he choked on unfamiliar flavors or preening when he gushed over his favorites. Sitting around the small fire they’d set up near the _geata rionnag_, his cheeks warmed at her attention in front of Boyd and his soldiers. And Dr. Reyes. It was almost like she was trying to show off for them.

“I’m sure the folks at MIT would be happy to know their million dollar probe also makes fine cookware,” Boyd drawled, snapping up a nibble from Aoibhe’s food and poking her nose when she faked a cry of indignation.

Stiles coughed through a bite of bread from the rations Boyd’s troup had offered to add to the meal. After more than a year of barely processed foods, it was a little hard to swallow. “It got pretty messed up when it came through the gate into our barricade, so we made use…” A spoon appeared in front of him, with a bite of steaming meat. He smiled over at Orla and reached for it. “It _is_ nonstick titanium.” He was getting used to eating hot foods with his hands, and he tossed the bite into his mouth, humming at the flavors. “_Ro math, mo ghaol. Everyone try this._”

Orla held a hand in front of his mouth to cover his speaking. “_You have terrible manners._”

His smug smile only made her peck his forehead.

“Boyd, Dunbar, Grenbaerg,” Cathal called. He made his way through the crowd with a horn in either hand. “_Òl_.”

Boyd blinked at Stiles, so he gestured with his hand. “Drink, Boyd. Just go with it. You too, Doctor Reyes, don’t be shy.”

Dubious, Boyd took the horn held out to him and sniffed it. “Is this booze? Should they be drinking this?”

“Why not?” Stiles asked, “They’re nearly adults.”

He laughed with the rest of them as Boyd nearly snorted the drink after a single sip. Their alcohol was like paint thinner, and Stiles had learned to avoid it at all costs. Reyes, Dunbar, and Greenburg all had similar reactions. Only Reyes went back for more.

Taking another bite, Stiles looked down at his knees. “So, this man who looked like Gwyn ap Nudd—”

“It wasn’t a man,” Greenburg interrupted. “This time it was a woman.”

Stiles froze. “Then…how did she look like Gwyn ap Nudd?”

Greenburg lifted his hand and ticked things off on his fingers. “Same dress style, only with this weird headdress. Same gold eyes. Same guards, only they weren’t human. They had glowing eyes like her, but they were red and blue. Plus, we listened to the recording, and she was speaking the same language, as far as we can tell.”

“Well, either way, she had to have come through another gate.”

Reyes lifted her head from her meal. “What other gate? The Stargate only goes here.”

Boyd’s voice overlapped hers. “Another Stargate?”

Stiles set down his food and leaned into Orla a little. “No, no, I think you’re wrong about that.”

Gaping, Reyes bristled. “I was there. We ran hundreds of permutations and nothing happened.”

“That’s because you were missing something,” Stiles snapped back.

Putting his hands up, Boyd said, “Stiles, what are you talking about?”

“Orlaith_, mo ghaol, I’m taking them to look at the tablets. Stay here?_” Stiles stood up and threw his cloak back over his shoulders. “I’ll show you. Come on.”

He turned to go, but Orla’s hand grabbed at his cloak spinning him back around. One of her hands dragged him down the inch or so difference between them into a kiss that was way more intimate than they usually did in public. Still, he tugged her close and kissed back, trying not to smile at the whoops and jeers coming from their audience. When she eventually let him pull away she rubbed their noses together. “Mieczysław, _it will be fine._”

Stiles smiled and bumped his forehead against hers, letting her calm demeanor soothe him. “_Of course.”_

It wasn’t too long a walk toward their roundhouse, and once inside, Stiles lit a few rushlights to see by. He was fortunate to be married to the daughter of the chief, because they had a larger home than most, with enough room for his findings. Dozens of tablets lay in piles against the wall, impressive only in number to the layman. Stiles walked over and picked one up.

“Doctor Reyes, you’ll probably like this more than they do, come look.” He handed it over with both hands as she approached. “You break it, you buy it, except that it’s priceless and I’ll never forgive you. Understand?”

Reyes snorted, but the hands that lifted the tablet were gentle. “I’m not planning to drop it, Doctor Stilinski.”

“Oh god, please just call me Stiles. I hate that title.”

But Erica had lost interest in him. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Please,” Boyd said. “Enlighten us.”

Stiles looked over, then grabbed another tablet. “I found this inside the cairn that Orlaith showed me on our first night here. The same place I’d found the way back to Earth. It turned out that they’d been _buried_ under the landmark to keep any of the tribe from reading it. I’m only through a with charting a few of them, but it’s already clear what they are. The symbols are separated into groupings, with seven symbols per group, so it’s obvious.”

Boyd frowned. “Not to us.”

“The symbols are all the same as the ones on the Stargate. With seven symbols making up one set of coordinates. Plus, I’ve been able to find some of them in the night sky here, or at least pretty close. I’m pretty sure this is a map of Stargates. An entire network of them, all over the galaxy.”

Finally done taking a picture of the tablet in her hands, and the ones nearest her, Erica came over to stand with Boyd and shook her head. “I don’t think that’s right, Doctor.”

Stiles barely managed to avoid rubbing his hands through his hair. It was so long now, he would completely ruin the design Orla had given him that morning. Instead, he rubbed at his eyebrow. “And why not?”

“Because,” Erica explained, “I told you, we _tried_ other coordinates on the Stargate on Earth, using Earth as the point of origin and none of them worked. They were complete failures.”

“Then where did your glowy eyed aliens come from?” Shifting, Stiles began to pace his home. “Look, I’m not gonna pretend I know jack about astrophysics, but don’t planets move? They shift, right? So why can’t they have shifted over time out and thrown the map off?”

Slowly, Erica grinned. “I knew I’d like you, Stiles.”

So, she was listening.

“Why? Am I right? Tell me it’s cus’ I’m right.”

Erica came over to stop him in his tracks and pointed over at the tablets. “The galaxy is a vortex. All the stars are constantly moving in relation to one another.”

Stiles nodded. “So in the thousands of years since the Stargate was built…”

“All the coordinates could have changed,” Erica finished.

“But why does it still work between Saoghal and Earth?” Stiles asked. He’d been sitting in his house for a year and a half trying to come up with the answers to these questions by himself, but he was a linguist. His expertise was the language and history of the Indo-Europeans, and in Saoghal’s case, their Proto-Indo-European version of a mix of Brythonic languages. It was a bit of a bunch of languages cobbled together, or rather, the origin of them all. 

He knew nothing about the stars, so getting the answers now was like scratching an itch.

Erica tipped her head. “Saoghal is probably the closest planet in the network to Earth. The closer they are, the less the difference in relative position. The further away, the bigger the difference. In a few thousand more years, it won’t work between Earth and Saoghal either.”

“Unless you can adjust for the displacement?”

“Right!” Erica agreed. “With these tablets to create a base map, that should be easy. All we have to do is correct for stellar drift. Then we can make a computer model that’ll predict the adjustments we need to get the gate working again.”

Finally, Boyd interrupted them. “So, the Stargate _can_ go other places?”

“Yes,” Stiles confirmed.

Beaming, Erica spun on Boyd. “I’m gonna get pictures of each of the tablets so I can download them into the computer at home.”

“Sure, go ahead.” Boyd waved her off.

“There’s more, you know,” Stiles said, going over to help Erica lay them out in the dim lighting. “There are more than a dozen cairns around the Stargate, and I’m sure if I took them apart I’d find more tablets. Of course, Orla made me promise to put them back together afterward, so it’s a lot more complicated. Who knew stacking stones was so hard?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did so much research for this fic, it's kind of ridiculous, especially considering how short it is. Friggin hours looking up proto-indo-european cultures, clothing, traditions, languages, etc. I barely ended up using half of it.  
Here's the Gaelic Translations:  
_Ro Math_: Very good  
_Òl_: Drink


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next chapter for you all, introducing another character that we all know and love, with some hidden talents. XD

“Stiles!Boyd! _You must come! Please! Hurry! The geata rionnag!_”

Stiles jolted upright at the sound of one of his students. “Boyd, were your people supposed to send anything else through?”

“No,” Boyd said. “Not for hours.” He gestured to Dunbar. “Go. We’re right behind you.”

“_Please!_” It was more like a scream, and Stiles ran for it. In the middle of the village, Tadhg was limping forward. “_The _Cŵn Annwn_ have returned!_”

“Orla,” Stiles whispered. Not waiting for the others to catch up, he ran for the Stargate, tripping in the moor and skidding in the mud near the small streams that zigzagged across it. “Orlaith!” he shouted.

Though the Stargate was dormant, the torches stuck in the ground to light up the area showed a massacre. The teens and young men and women that’d volunteered for the guard were sprawled across the ground, and Stiles’ stomach turned at the scent of blood. Searching for Orlaith by clothes, Stiles found Cathal near the gate. As he knelt next to him, the others ran up behind him and went for Greenburg, who’d opted to stay behind and was now folded over one of the mounds.

Stiles took Cathal’s head in his hands. “_Where is _Orlaith_? Where is she? What happened?_”

“_The _Cŵn Annwn_ came, with _Gwyn ap Nudd_ in female form,”_ Cathal gasped, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“No! _Sguir! _Gwyn ap Nudd_ is dead. The _Cŵn Annwn_ are dead. Where is _Orlaith?”

Cathal sniffled and whispered, “_They took _Orlaith_. They took _Aoibhe_. Into the geata rionnag._” He let out another whimper, then went still.

Stiles shook Cathal by the shoulders, then patted at his cheeks. “Cathal? Cathal, _dùisg_! Wake up!”

Dunbar stood. “Stiles, what happened? They keep saying Gwyn ap Nudd. What if they’re right? What if there’s another one, some girl version?”

“How the hell should I know?” Stiles shouted. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, I should have left the barricade up! This is my fault.”

He rose from Cathal’s side to tend to Áine, who was bleeding from her shoulder. His students, his family. He’d left them vulnerable to this.

“Colonel, Greenburg needs medical attention, _now_,” Erica cried, pushing a pad of cloth into Greenburg’s chest to staunch the bleeding.

“Go! Help him, I can send you back,” Stiles said. At least Áine was still breathing smoothly, though she, like so many of the others was crying.

Boyd came up and put a hand on Stiles’ shoulder that he couldn’t shake off. “You’re coming with us this time, Stiles. I have orders.”

Standing, Stiles squinted around him. It was so dark, he could barely see all of the bodies to tell if anyone was breathing. “I don’t care about your orders, Boyd. My wife is out there, Aoibhe is out there. I need—”

“The only way you’re gonna get them back is by coming home with us, Stiles,” Boyd said. “Greenburg might have seen those coordinates.”

“That isn’t my home,” Stiles snapped. “This is. This is my home, Colonel, and look what I did to it!” He stopped and looked around, at the small point of light in the distance that showed where the village was. He’d never expected to hear from Earth again, let alone go back.

Staying on Saoghal wasn’t like taking a vacation to learn a new culture. He’d abandoned Earth, chosen to leave his father there so he could protect Orla’s people and stay with her. Stiles had immersed himself completely in their world, made it his as well. In a few more years, he’d probably have given up on using any English, even with Orla. This was supposed to be his home.

He knew the names of every child in the tribe, could tell the difference between the twin toddlers that ran amuck all day. He ate with them, taught them, learned from them. Orla’s father was somewhere in that village tending to chieftain matters, and he didn’t even know his daughters had been taken yet.

Holding back tears, Stiles raised his arms as though he were calling his students to class. “_Trobhad seo! Come to me and listen._” They gathered around him, shadows and shapes in the dark. “_After we go through the geata rionnag, you have to bury it like we did before, and leave this place.”_

Eoghan pushed his way to the front of the crowd and reached for Stiles’ brat. “_You’ll come back, right?_”

“_No, I can’t. Nobody can. That’s what I’m telling you. Not for a long time. As soon as we are gone, you must cover it. Put a heavy stone over it, bury it. Nothing good will come from this geata! Do you understand?_”

More hands grabbed at Stiles’ cloak, pulling it out in a dozen directions.

“_You came from the geata rionnag, _Stiles,” Eoghan muttered.

Sniffling, Stiles reached out and put a hand on Eoghan’s face, then went to the child next to him, Fionn. Then the next, speaking all the while. “_Do you remember what I told you about your ancestors? How they cut themselves off from _Gwyn ap Nudd _and the _Cŵn Annwn? _You must do the same._ _And one year from today, exactly one year, you take the coverstone away and I will try to return with _Orla _and _Aiobhe. _But if I do not…” _Stiles blinked and swallowed for a second. “_If I do not return, you must bury the gate forever. Tuigsinn?_”

Though Eoghan and several others nodded, Stiles needed more. “_Promise me!_”

“_Geall!_” said, Eoghan.

Around Stiles, more voices chimed in. “_Geall! Geall, Stiles!_”

Leaning in to Eoghan, Stiles put a hand on his shoulder. “_Tell Orla’s father that I will try to bring his daughters back. Tell him I’m sorry._”

He pulled Eoghan in for a hug, squeezing him tight with one arm and reaching for Fionn’s wrist as the others piled around him. Hands clutched at his cloak, pressed into his hair, and touched his face and shoulders with goodbyes.

As he punched in the coordinates on the dial, Stiles swiped at his eyes. There was no reason to cry, because he _would_ return.

—

Sitting in a debriefing room, surrounded by suits and the new General of the base, Peter Hale, Stiles seethed. This was his _wife_ and his _sister_, that were missing. How _dare_ they refuse to include him in the rescue team? Only Boyd’s firm hand on his wrist kept him from pacing the room or getting up to shout.

“Greenburg might have seen the sequence of symbols they used to go through the Stargate, which should tell us where they went,” Erica said. “General, Sti—Doctor Stilinski found tablets full of hundreds of sets of coordinates. That’s hundreds of new worlds, General.”

General Hale was practically nonchalant about the whole thing. “And our Stargate can take us to these worlds?”

“As long as we make the appropriate allowances, which we can figure out from the data I collected—”

“Yes, or no?”

Erica paused. “I—I think so, sir. Yes. Requesting permission to upload the symbols to the computer for analysis.”

Boyd’s hand squeezed Stiles’ wrist. “And I’d like to lead the rescue mission once we find out where these hostiles are, sir.”

General Hale waved his hand and stood from his chair. “We’ll discuss that request in a briefing at 0800 hours. Captain Reyes, the base computer is at your disposal. In the meantime, get this man some clean clothes, or a haircut. Or both.”

As everyone else filed out of the room, Stiles stayed and stared down at the table. Eight o’clock in the morning? What was he supposed to do until then? Every minute that they weren’t out looking for Orlaith and Aoibhe put them in more danger. He folded his arms on the table and buried his face in them, letting the scent of Orla’s homemade soap envelope him. What was he supposed to do?

“Hey,” came a quiet voice.

Stiles peeked up to see a lanky man leaning against the doorway. He didn’t look like military, no suit or regulation buzzcut. Just dirty blond curls and a dress shirt with the tie undone. “What?” Stiles muttered.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.”

With a huff, Stiles lowered his head again. “I _am_ clean. We bathe almost daily, with _soap_.”

The voice came closer. “Yeah, well, your soap sucks, and you have blood on your hands. Look, if you let me help, I’ll—I’ll even rebraid your hair or whatever. It’s a mess.”

At that, Stiles sat up and looked down at his hands. Sure enough, there were dark red streaks up his wrists and over his fingers. He glanced up at one of the windows in the room, and saw that in his reflection his hair was mussed to hell. He stood, slowly. “You can braid hair?”

“I’m a guy of many talents. Come on.”

As they left the room, Stiles looked over at his new companion. “My name is Stiles.”

The guy nodded. “Yeah, I know, Doctor Stilinski. I’m Isaac Lahey. I’m the one who turns on the Stargate.”

“So you’re the one that had to do all those failed combos, huh?”

“Yup. I mean, hey, it’s a job. But being told that the thing could actually make a wormhole to another planet, then watching it _not_ do that over and over again, was a little disheartening. Was satisfying as _fuck_ to get to turn it on and send that bottle to Saogel.”

Stiles snorted. “Saoghal. Not Saogel.”

“Shit, sorry.”

“Nah, I made the same mistake like a thousand times. Orla…” Stiles stopped talking.

They made their way in silence to a locker room that Isaac pointed out. Then, he reached into a cupboard and pulled a set of military greens with a plain black shirt, black socks, and black underwear. “Here.”

Stepping back a little, Stiles pulled his cloak closer to himself. He wasn’t about to let them throw his clothes away. “No thanks, dude.”

“Come on,” Isaac sighed. “I’ll get those cleaned for you. Someone’s probably gonna wanna photograph them for like archeological evidence or something. They’re not getting tossed.”

It took fifteen minutes to get all of the ornaments and braids out of his hair, then another five minutes to get a brush through it, but after a hot shower with real soap, shampoo, and conditioner, Stiles did feel better. He combed his hair out one more time once he’d gotten dressed, then sat on the bench with Isaac behind him, the pile of feathers and beads in between them.

“Uh, you don’t need these in all the same places, right?” Isaac asked. “Cus’ I do _not_ have a photographic memory.”

Stiles shook his head slowly, gazing down at the shiny metal of the bench. “No, not really. But the braids—”

“I got those, don’t worry about it.”

And he did. Half an hour later, Stiles’ hair was rebraided almost exactly the same as Orla did it, with the feathers sticking out, rather than getting buried in frizz. He felt almost back to normal, except for the clothing. After a year and a half of not wearing pants, the fabric of his trousers felt way too restrictive, to say nothing of the underwear.

Unfortunately, Isaac actually had things to do, so once he’d given Stiles an awkward pat on the shoulder, he left. Once again lost, Stiles stood at the intersection of a few tunnels. He was pretty sure there wasn’t a place for him to sleep tonight, and there was no way he was going to be able to get all the way home to his dad down in L.A. Beacon Hills was hours away from there.

Besides, as far as his dad knew, Stiles had been forced into a top secret, confidential mission for the foreseeable future. He’d made sure before Boyd left that _he _would be the one to bring the news of Stiles’ supposed death to his dad, and that he would give him an alternate story instead. That, and that Boyd would give Stiles’ Jeep back to his dad, rather than letting it sit in an underground garage for the rest of time.

A quiet presence came up to Stiles’ shoulder, and he turned to see Boyd standing there, decked out in civilian clothes like a real human. “Hey. No haircut?”

“They don’t know what to do with me,” Stiles admitted. “And I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Boyd said.

Stiles followed him out of the building, into Boyd’s car, and down to his home. It was fall on Earth, chilly and damp. Stiles missed his cloak the entire drive.

—

“So what happened after we left?” Boyd asked, leaning back in his armchair, a beer in hand.

Stiles tried to get comfortable on the couch, but it was too soft. “Uh, well, we buried the gate like you told us. Then, the people of Saoghal realized that they were free. That their planet was theirs for the taking. No more mining the land that was sacred to them, just agriculture and raising animals, and free time.”

“Free time? You guys had a party, huh?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, big party. Huge party. They treated me like their savior: it was embarrassing as hell.”

Boyd took a drink. “Savior of Saoghal, doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Yeah, I spent the first six months having to stop everyone I saw from cheering or bowing all the time,” Stiles retorted. He hadn’t been allowed to do _anything_ himself. It hadn’t helped that Aiobhe had clung to his leg for a few months too, distraught over Boyd leaving.

“Yet you turned out so _normal_.” Boyd smirked into his bottle.

That Stiles could almost laugh at. Almost. “If it wasn’t for Orlaith, I probably…” He froze, then rubbed at his eyebrow. “She was the complete opposite of everyone else. She practically fell on the ground laughing every time I tried to do some chore they all took for granted. Like, cleaning bherreag hides. They’re like deer, only, for some reason their antlers come out of their back. Have you ever tried to clean a hide? To prepare it for clothing or for making blankets or drums? There’s about a hundred different techniques and she knew them all by heart. Finally she got tired of me ruining the skins and just shoved me toward the nearest loom. At least yarn can be unravelled if you mess it up.”

A wave of exhaustion hit Stiles. Even with its thirty-six hour days, it had to be nearly dawn in Saoghal. “So, how have you been, then?” he edged.

The last time he’d seen Boyd, the man had been suicidal over the loss of his little sister, planning on nuking most of Saoghal, himself included. Now though, he looked down at the ground. “I’m…better.”

And that was the end of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I struggled real hard with who to make Isaac, and finally I decided that he was gonna pop in whenever I wanted him to. It feels _very_ accurate for Isaac to just hop around wherever he wants.  
Translations:  
_dùisg_: Wake up  
_Trobhad seo_: Come here  
_Tuigsinn_: Understand  
_Geall_: Promise


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter, with a little bit of background info and a new planet.

Stiles showed up at the Beacon Hills complex with Boyd wearing yesterday’s clothes and was almost immediately found by Isaac.

“Who’s this?” Boyd asked. “When did you have time to make friends with the other nerds?”

Isaac just smirked and handed over a pile of clothes. “Here, I figured you’d want these back.” But when Stiles reached out to take them, he pulled them back a little. “I mean, if you want some modern clothes, you can just go grab them from the locker room.”

“No, I’ll take these,” Stiles rushed, snatching them up. “Thank you.”

“No, thank _you_. I sold a photo of this stuff to some archaeologists. You just paid my rent.”

Boyd snorted. “You work for the Air Force, how do you not have enough to pay your rent?”

Isaac shrugged. “I mean, I _do_. I also work allnighters and come in before dawn. You have no idea how much coffee I drink.” Like the night before, he wandered away rather than giving an actual goodbye.

Stiles ended up changing in an actual broom closet in order to get to the meeting on time. Luckily, he’d slept mostly sitting up the night before, so at least his hair was still in good shape.

General Hale looked less than pleased at his outfit. “I could have sworn I told you to get real clothes.” When Stiles didn’t respond, he switched right back to business. “People, what is spoken of in this room is classified as SCI, top secret. Colonel, what do we know about these hostiles that we didn’t yesterday?”

“Not a lot,” Boyd said. “The boys on Saoghal who survived the attack on base camp thought it was Gwyn ap Nudd in female form.”

“I thought he was dead. Now he can change genders as he pleases? Which is it?”

Stiles leaned over the table. “He’s dead. He’s definitely dead. I mean, the bomb…” Stiles looked over at Boyd. “He’s gotta be dead, right?”

“Then who is coming through the Stargates?” Hale asked.

“Gods,” Stiles said. At the affronted looks of most of the men at the table, he held a hand up. “Not ‘God’, god. Gwyn ap Nudd played a god. The leader of the Wild Hunt and the land of the faeries. He used the religion and culture of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, which was a mishmash of Celtic, Germanic, and Irish tribes all blending together in the early Neolithic period, and used that information to enslave them. He kept guards call the Cŵn Annwn, which were supposed to be spectral hounds for some reason. He wanted the people of Saoghal to believe that he was the _only_ one, all powerful.”

Erica spoke up. “You’re saying Gwyn ap Nudd wasn’t the last of his race, after all?”

“Maybe he’s got a sister, Gwen,” Dunbar snarked.

Boyd silenced him with a look.

“Wait, wait. The legend goes, “Gwyn ap Nudd’s race was dying. He survived by taking over the body of a human host, a Celtic boy. But who’s to say more of his kind couldn’t do the same thing? This could have happened at any time, anywhere there’s a gate. The Celts and the Irish and have all sorts of myths of Gods. Any one of them could have been another of this ancient race.”

With a hand up to silence the room, General Hale turned to Boyd. “Colonel, you have the most experience in fighting this hostile. Assuming you have to defend yourself in the field, are you up to it?”

Not the type to brag, Boyd just nodded. “We beat them once.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘maybe.’ Captain Reyes, you’re sure the Stargate will take us where we want to go with these new numbers?”

“The computer is feeding the revised coordinates into the system as we speak. It’ll take a while to calculate, but it should spit out two or three new destinations a month.”

Folding his hands, Hale addressed the room again. “Let’s not fool ourselves here, people, this thing is new and big and dangerous. We’re in so far over our heads we can barely see daylight. These hostiles have got technology so far superior to our own that we have no idea how it works. We would all be much safer and better off if the Stargate had been left in the dirt.”

Erica clasped her hands together. “We can’t just bury our heads in the sand. Do you have any idea how much we could learn? What we could bring back?”

“What you could bring back is exactly what I’m worried about, Captain,” Hale snapped. Then, he grimaced at his paperwork. “However. The President of the United States happens to agree with you. If your theories pan out, he’s ordered us to form nine teams to perform reconnaissance, determine threats, and, if _possible_, to make peaceful contact with the peoples of these worlds. These teams will operate on a covert, top-secret basis. No one will know they exist except the President and the joint chiefs.” He took a deep breath after his speech. “Colonel Boyd?”

“Sir?”

“Your team will be designated SG-1. The team will consist of yourself, Captain Reyes—”

“And me?” Stiles asked. They were supposed to be talking about getting his wife back. If being on this stupid team was what it took, Stiles needed to be a part of it.

He barely listened as Hale said, “Doctor Stilinski, we need you to work as a consultant to the other SG teams from here. Your expertise in ancient cultures and languages is far too valuable—”

Stiles stood up. “I _really_ have to be on their team. Do you not understand that my _wife_ is out there, General? I need to go!”

Though the room was quiet before, now Stiles would have been able to hear a pin drop. After a second of tense eye contact, Hale nodded. “I’ll take that under consideration.” Then, immediately. “Major Dunbar, you will head SG-2.”

“I will?” Dunbar balked.

“Colonel Boyd keeps telling me you need a command,” Hale said, looking unimpressed.

Boyd himself actually smiled. “I had a moment of weakness, don’t get used to it.”

The door at the back of the room popped open, and Stiles nearly jumped at seeing Isaac step in, a folded piece of paper in his hand. He delivered it to Hale then winked at Stiles over his shoulder as he left.

With a small hum, Hale held up the paper. “Looks like Greenburg is awake.”

Boyd and Dunbar were out the door before anyone else had stood up, and Hale waved his hand to dismiss them with more than a little annoyance.

—

Stiles refused to change his clothes again, only agreeing to throw a bulletproof vest on underneath his tunic on threat of being removed from the mission. He had everything he needed, without those billions of pockets. Just his medication and some extra food tucked into the leather pouch at his waist.

He didn’t listen to the spiel Boyd got about their twenty-four hour limit, just tried to adjust the vest against his chest in a way that it wouldn’t chafe around his ribs. It was so _tight_ compared to his usual tunic. As they entered the gate room, he could hear Isaac’s voice over the speakers warning them that the last star point had been locked into place.

The burst of blue within the wormhole didn’t look nearly as impressive as it had on Saoghal, against the orange evening sky.

On the other side of the gate, Stiles fell to his knees on carved stone steps, almost exactly like the ones on Saoghal. In a moment of confusion, he looked around. The setup was the same, except for a spiral of standing stones that filled the field they were at the center of.

The air was ice cold, even after he’d adjusted to the gate travel, but this time he had his heavy wool-like brat to pull around him like a blanket.

“Okay, people, get the gear out. Let’s move! Stiles, what’re we looking at here?” Byd asked.

Stiles turned in a circle. The land didn’t look manually flattened, but this kind of presentation wasn’t to be taken lightly. “It must be some sort of ceremonial place. The gate is—it has to be an integral part of their spiritual culture. It’s built for worshippers.”

“I want to be out of here before the ‘worshipees’ show up, got it? Did you figure out how to align the gate to get home?”

Scowling, Stiles pointed at the dial with his pen. “It’s the same as the one on Saoghal. This symbol represents—”

“Does Dunbar’s team need debriefed?”

“Not really, I already told him how to dial Earth. Now, this symbol—”

A big hand clapped Stiles on the shoulder as Boyd moved past him. “Good job.”

One of Dunbar’s men was the one to find a trail through the mountain, and once SG-2 had begun setting up a rudimentary base camp, Stiles followed Boyd and Reyes into the trees.

“So…Stiles. Tell me more about Orla,” Reyes said, tilting her voice up at the end or Orla’s name like a kid would at the lunch table. “How did you meet?”

“Orlaith? Well…she’s, uh…”

From the front, Boyd called, “She was a gift!”

Stiles nodded and pushed past a branch of some kind of pine variant. “She was, actually. From her father, the chief of their tribe, the first night we were there. They thought I was one of the Cŵn Annwn and wanted to make a good impression.”

In a moment, Reyes’ face went from curious to furious. “And you accepted?”

“Hold up,” Boyd barked. “Movement.”

Stiles was dragged to the side, down into a bush, where they watched a group of people dressed similarly to the druids on Saoghal heading up the path. They carried the kind of ornate, tall staffs that only the most respected druids on Saoghal had been allowed to own. To earn one took at least twenty years.

Beside him, Boyd muttered. “Reyes, see any weapons?”

“No.”

“They’re worshippers,” Stiles whispered. He got up and made his way around the bush into the open, his hands raised in peace. “_Halò_!”

The entire troupe stopped and stared at him. Chuckling a little, Stiles lowered his hands. “_We came through the geata rionnag?_”

“_Geata Rionnag!_” Cried the man at the front of the group, and they all began to bow.

Stiles _hated_ when they bowed. “Please…please don’t do that.”

As Boyd came up behind him, Stiles held up a finger. “Not a word, dude.” Technically, he supposed Boyd’s snort didn’t count as a word. “Look, unless we want to get a really _bad_ reputation, we should maybe not shoot the first people we see on a new planet.”

He turned around to where they still kneeled. “You don’t have to _do_ that,” he sighed, going over and putting one arm under the first man’s elbow, he lifted him up to his feet again.

“_Ydych chi yma i ddewis?_”

That, wasn’t the language from Saoghal. Stiles tried to repeat what the man had said in his head. “_Dewis?_” he finally said. “Choose. Boyd, they’re asking if we’re here to choose.”

Boyd just shrugged.

“Uh, sure. Choosing is good.” The gears in Stiles head spun. “It’s a derivation of Welsh, combined with—”

“Stiles, just ask them to take us to the nearest village,” Boyd interrupted.

Stuttering, Stiles tried to act out what he meant: steepling his fingers together to create a hand roof. “Uh, village? Uh…oh! _Pentref? Pentref?_”

Finally, the man nodded. “Cherk. Cherk.”

That was definitely not a word. It sounded more like a name. “I think the village is called Cherk.”

Letting the druids lead them, Stiles could only hope he wasn’t going to get them in trouble for aiding him. Then Cherk came into view, and Stiles was a little more worried about himself.

“Cherk…sounds great,” he squeaked.

Boyd nudged him to keep him moving. “Yeah, I hear it’s nice this time of year.”

“You know, your humor has _definitely_ improved over the last year and a half,” Stiles noted.

It was not the roundhoused village he’d been expecting. Instead, it was a vast city of carved stone houses. The entire mountain it was pressed against must’ve been carved out to make the buildings. There was certainly nothing like it in any archeological dig Stiles had heard of, but that might’ve been because of the lack of gigantic mountain ranges in ancient Wales. As they got closer, Stiles recognized how much more advanced the architecture was. The columns he was seeing were practically Roman, which brought up questions of cultural evolution that make Stiles’ head swim.

Was it possible that the various architectures on Earth were pre-ordained? That humans just naturally tended toward certain aesthetics once they reached a certain stage in their cultural advancements, affected only by environment? Since the weather and topography were similar to that of Italy, was it possible that there were other planets where other cultures had the chance to continue evolving, without fear of colonialism? For all that the concept of of these false gods enslaving people of every culture made him sick to his stomach, he couldn’t help a tingle of curiosity about what a fully evolved Aztec city would look like. How would Egypt have evolved without constant invasion? Spain? Nigeria?

It was the kind of thing he would have loved to rant to Orla about, and that thought pulled Stiles back on track as they entered the city.

The druid led them to a massive house in the center of the city, and inside to a large dining hall. The table was set low to the floor and was covered in food and drink. Sitting on cushions around the meal were almost a dozen clearly high-born men and women.

Without another word, the druid waved them to the end of the table and stared at them until Stiles sat. Boyd and Reyes followed him.

“Why are they treating us like this?” Reyes asked, sniffing at a cup of some kind of alcohol.

Stiles picked up a piece of semi-familiar looking fruit and tried to look nonchalant. “They think we’re gods.”

“Nice.”

As plates of food were held out, Stiles poked at some of it and hoped he didn’t come across as rude. “This is a feast of some kind, apparently they’re expecting someone.”

Boyd hadn’t so much as touched his meal. “So, we’re gods. Now what?”

“I have no idea,” Stiles admitted.

“You should tell them we need to look around,” Erica said. She took a sip from her vase-like cup and raised her eyebrows in silent appreciation.

Before Stiles could attempt to translate that request into Welsh, the musician who’d been playing low tones sent a much louder note out into the room that made everyone drop their food and bow their heads down to the edge of the table. After a moment, Stiles did the same, and looked over at Boyd and Reyes. “Uh…do as the Romans do?”

Moments later, a group of people entered on silent feet. They wore no armor, no protection of any kind, just coarse looking hide leggings, and short fur cloaks. Even the only woman wore only a bare strip of hide across her chest and a matching cloak to the rest. Their hair was far longer than Stiles’, with even the men’s hair full of small braids.

Though the people that Stiles had seen so far had all been human, these guards definitely were not. Their faces were distorted into those of near animals, with long canines and eyes that glowed a bloody red instead of gold. Their eyebrows were thick, and the bridges of their noses were unnaturally wide and had little ridges. At the ends of their fingers and feet were long claws.

One man came up to the front of the small dais they’d stopped on, different from the rest in that his eyes were blue, and his fangs were the only distortion of his face. “_Gweler dy Heliwr!_” he shouted, holding up a clawed hand.

He stepped aside to reveal the woman that the people of Saoghal had clearly mistaken for Gwyn ap Nudd. The “Huntress” as the man had called her looked like some demented form of Artemis, or a twisted version of Freya. She wore a sheer tunic that hid nothing, belted at the waist with a golden chain. Dividing her chest was the silver string of a bow. Her golden hair matched her eyes in the creepiest way, and there was something that looked like an archery glove on her right hand, but it too was silver.

At her side, was Orlaith, dressed in a hide strip over her chest, and hide leggings. Her eyes blazed red and fangs stretched over her lips, but it was still his Orlaith.

“Behold,” the woman said. “My newest pet.”

Stiles shot to his feet. “Orlaith, _mo ghaol_. _Come away!_”

Beside him, Boyd reached for Stiles’ arm to yank him back down, but Stiles pulled away and rounded the table.

“_Bow before your Goddess!”_ the blue eyed man yelled. He spoke the language of Saoghal like a native, but Stiles couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Orla!” he cried, holding out a hand for her. She wasn’t moving, hadn’t even looked at him. “Please, come with me.”

Finally, Orla looked at him, and growled like a dog or a wolf. Like a hound. She crouched at the Huntress’ feet, snarling and snapping her teeth in his direction. The Huntress herself looked positively furious. Swinging her bow off her back, she drew the string back with her silver-gloved hand without an arrow, and let go.

Stiles’ feet left the ground as a bolt of energy shot into his chest. He didn’t have time to shout before his head hit a wall and he lost consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say, I love me a polyglot. My boys speaking their languages. So cute. In this chapter I used an ancient welsh dictionary, so the translations are probably even worse that the Gaelic. Plus, it's nigh impossible to conjugate with just a dictionary.  
Translations of Welsh:  
_Ydych chi yma i ddewis?_: You are here to choose?  
_Pentref_: Village  
_Gweler dy Heliwr_: See/witness your Huntress


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nearly there, nearly there. I'm really happy to be putting this fic up. I had to do some twists and turns with mythos in here, and I can only hope it's actually interesting.

“Stiles. Stiles!”

The voice of a woman penetrated the heavy fog in Stiles’ mind and he twitched a little before rushing back to consciousness. “Orlaith!”

He shot upwards, fighting against Reyes’ hands on his chest until he was sitting, then standing.

“Easy,” she ordered. “You’ve been unconscious for hours.”

“No, I saw her! I saw Orla.”

Erica was about half of what was holding him up, and she gripped his arms tight. “I know, we all did.”

Someone else’s murmurs caught Stiles’ ear, and he turned to look around. They were in a massive room, with a high ceiling and ornate walls, but a dirt floor. Over a hundred people were standing or sitting around, wearing clothing so diverse it looked like some kind of World Cultures meeting. “Where are we?”

“Some kind of prison,” Erica explained. “Now will you please sit down before you pass out again? You should be dead.”

As if on cue, Stiles’ head went fuzzy, and his knees gave out, forcing him to let Erica shove him over to one of a few boulders scattered around the room. He sat, waiting for his vision to clear, while Erica gave him a summary of what’d happened.

“It all happened so fast. Gwyn ap Nudd sent you flying across the room with that energy arrow, one of the Cŵn Annwn knocked the Colonel over the head. Next thing I know, we’re all here.”

Stiles rubbed his face. “No, no, it wasn’t Gwyn ap Nudd. It was someone else. He called her, ‘The Huntress.’”

Erica sat next to him. “The who?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know,” Stiles sighed. “This—this whole thing with these aliens has been based off mythology. Celtic, Irish, some German. Gwyn ap Nudd is the god of the Wild Hunt, and the Cŵn Annwn are supposed to be his hounds. Now, there’s multiple gods of hunting in general from those areas, but most of them are male. The goddesses involved are usually their wives. Freya or Frigg. There’s the Morrigan who’s a goddess of combat in general. But there is no, ‘Huntress.’ She doesn’t exist.” For a moment, he wracked his mind to find who this woman was, then he realized he didn’t particularly care. “What has she done to Orla? I’ve got to find her.”

He tried to stand, only to be yanked back by his brat. Erica frowned at him. “No, we can’t.”

“If—if I could just—”

“Stiles! You saw her eyes, her face. The goddess called her a ‘pet.’ These hostiles are parasites, you said so yourself. They use human bodies as hosts—”

Stiles shoved away. “No! No! I don’t—no!”

“If there’s a way out of here, I can’t find it.” Boyd came up, as stoic as ever, and clapped a hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “But look what I did find.”

A small shape dashed through the bodies of those closest to them and wrapped around Stiles’ legs, disappearing under his cloak as he bent over and hugged her back. “Aoibhe, _you’re okay. Are you hurt?_”

Aoibhe simply shook her head, clinging to him so tightly her little fists actually hurt against his hips. Instinctively, he sat back down and let her climb into his lap, holding her the way Orla had taught him when she had nightmares. “_Neach-gaoil, it’s okay. I’m here.”_

Over her head, he looked up. “Boyd, please. Help me. We can—”

Boyd put a hand up. “Stiles…don’t.” After a moment, he dropped his hand down to Aoibhe’s hair and crouched. “The two of you need to get some rest.” To Erica, he said, “You still got that transmitter?”

“Yeah.”

“We might have to destroy it,” Boyd sighed. “If we can’t find a way out of here the mission’s a bust, and we don’t want whoever that chick was getting a hold of it.”

To Stiles’ surprise, Erica snorted a little. “Well she still doesn’t know the code. There’s a half a billion permutations.”

Stiles watched Boyd frown. “No offense to you, but these people are way smarter than us.”

Erica frowned too, but didn’t argue.

“I’m going to look around some more, you coming, Reyes?”

Suddenly Boyd was yanked to his feet, his arm held fast by the Cŵn Annwn with the blue eyes. “What is this?” he barked.

Stiles pulled Aoibhe closer to him and turned slightly, covering her more with his brat to keep her out of the Cŵn Annwn’s sight.

Boyd squirmed, trying to take his arm back. “It’s a watch. It tells the time.”

In a transformation right out of a Harry Potter movie, the Cŵn Annwn’s eyes turned a normal, human hazel, and his fangs and claws melted away into human teeth and fingernails. “Where are you from?”

“Earth,” Boyd answered simply.

“This word means nothing.” The man turned his eyes on Stiles and they glowed blue again. “_Where are you from?_”

Slowly, Stiles leaned down to the ground, still holding Aoibhe to him, and drew in the dirt the symbol they’d learned meant Earth. A tree with roots as long as its branches. “_This is where we are from._”

The Cŵn Annwn growled, his fangs growing back, and he swiped his foot through the symbol, then turned and stormed away, right out the gate at the front.

“Friendly guy,” Erica commented.

“What was that about?” Stiles asked.

Boyd rubbed at his arm. “I don’t know. Come on, Reyes.”

There was nothing to do but wait, muttering to Aoibhe until she finally pulled her head away from his clothes and asked him, “_Where is Orla?_”

Stiles rubbed a bit of dirt off her chin and lied through his teeth. “_I don’t know, neach-gaoil. But we’ll find her, and then we’ll go home._”

He moved to the ground after a while, leaning against the wall with Aoibhe in his crossed legs. Ever so slowly, he unbraided her hair and handed her the beads that belonged in it, then put it all back together again. It was another thing Orla had liked about him. His talent with weaving crossed over to braiding, and they would sit together each morning and do each other’s hair. His fingers were nimble when he really focused, and it took almost no time at all to get Aoibhe’s hair back into place, the braids holding down the puff of the rest of her textured hair.

Eventually, she fell asleep, and Stiles went with her.

When he woke up, Boyd and Erica were still circling the room, climbing up small ledges to get a peek out the high windows that let sunlight into the room. If they were on a twenty-four hour limit, how much time was left?

A chorus of snarls from red-eyed guard to red-eyed guard preceded the reopening of the gate, and, without another choice, Stiles took Aoibhe and joined the throng of people that’d huddled together at the center of the room. First through the gate were more Cŵn Annwn, all snarling and sniffing at the air like the hounds they were. One of the last, was Orla herself.

Stiles jumped to his feet. “Orla. Boyd, please, please, help me.”

But instead, Erica and Boyd held him back, pulling him into the rest of the crowd.

Next, came the blue-eyed hound, his arms outstretched again.

“_Penglinio! Sleuchd!_ Kneel!”

With prods from the other guards, everyone began to kneel. One of them came up behind Stiles and shoved him to the ground. As his knees hit dirt, he grabbed at Aoibhe’s hand and tugged her down to join him, keeping her out of the Cŵn Annwn’s grasp. She kneeled between Stiles and Boyd, clinging to each of their wrists and trembling.

A set of four Cŵn Annwn came through, each carrying a corner of a litter with one hand, as though the weight meant nothing to them. Once they set it down, the Huntress climbed out.

“Be happy, if I choose you, you will join my court in the Wild Hunt,” she said.

After a moment the blue-eyed one repeated her words in a few different dialects. Then, he nodded to the red ones nearest him. They flowed out into the main area of the prison, snatching up person after person and dragging them to stand in front of the Huntress. One by one she either shook her head, in which case the person was tossed back into the crowd with a strength Stiles’d never seen before, or nodded, prompting the Cŵn Annwn to pull them out of the room.

The one who’d spoken to Boyd walked to the side, standing still as stone. Stiles glared at him until his eyes swam, then let go of Aoibhe and pushed over to that end of the crowd. “What happens if I’m chosen?” he cried.

Instantly, clawed hands grasped at his shoulders and arms and shoved him to the ground until he was curled over his knees, head facing the floor. Still, he shouted, “What will I remember? Surely something of the host must survive?”

The voice above him was calm and quiet. “Nothing.”

Stiles barely noticed getting kicked back into the crowd, or Erica trying to pull him back to where Boyd and Aoibhe were kneeling. All at once, the Cŵn Annwn stopped, frozen and staring at the Huntress. Her hand was raised, a smile wide on her face. “I want _her_.”

As her finger pointed, Boyd began to shout, and Aoibhe began to scream.

“Boyd! Stiles! _Sguir! Sguir dheth! Please!”_

They could only watch as she was carried out of the room, bawling and reaching over the shoulders of the one who held her.

The Huntress was unfazed. She turned and smiled over at the blue-eyed one. “Derek, be a dear. Kill the rest.”

Derek nodded and bowed, staying down until the Huntress had climbed back into her litter and been carried out of the room by four different guards, Orla included. As he rose, the Cŵn Annwn around him began to growl and circle to the front, creating an unbreakable chain across the front of the room and herding the prisoners toward the back.

Soon, the only ones left in the middle were Stiles, Erica, and Boyd.

“I can save these people!” Boyd shouted at Derek, as though he knew something Stiles didn’t. “Help us!”

Derek growled, taking a single step out of line with the rest of the Cŵn Annwn and raising a clawed hand. “Many have said that.” Then, he turned and plunged his hand into the neck of the Cŵn Annwn beside him.

Instantly, the red leeched from its eyes, and it sank to the ground. Turning, Derek threw his clean hand out and a piece of silver shot through the air, landing against Boyd’s chest. It was a silver glove, exactly like the one the Huntress had been wearing.

“But you are the first I believe. Draw a bow!”

Stiles pulled Erica back as Boyd put the glove on. A little flimsily, Boyd drew an imaginary bow, aiming toward the mass of Cŵn Annwn that’d begun to swarm over Derek. When he let go, a real bolt of energy slammed into the group, and two more fell to the ground and didn’t get up.

Stiles was useless, watching Derek and Boyd take out the Cŵn Annwn in the room. The air became a terrible mixture of blood and burnt skin. Derek’s weapon of choice was his claws and teeth, pulling the intestines out of those that got too close and slashing the throats of everyone else.

When the guards in the room were dead, Boyd turned toward the back wall and threw his bare hand to the side. “Get out of the way!”

Stiles yanked at people, getting them out of the space where Boyd was now pointing another imaginary arrow. It took three shots before the wall blew open properly, but as soon as Boyd had checked outside, he began shouting for people to leave.

Prisoners poured toward the opening, half-carrying each other or just running on their own. Stiles was one of the last to go, stumbling over to the hole. He paused, looking over the Derek, who still stood at the front of the room, covered in blood, his fur cloak torn to ribbons. Then, Stiles looked at Boyd.

“You gonna be okay?” Boyd asked.

Stiles didn’t answer, just stepped through the two foot thick wall and out into the cold.

He’d had her in the same room as him. He’d had Aoibhe in his arms and braided her hair. They were both gone. What was he supposed to tell the others? Their father?

“Hey,” Boyd shouted, leaning inside the building. “Let’s go!”

From inside, a quiet voice said, “I have nowhere to go.”

“For this, you can stay at my place.”

Moments later, Derek came out of the wall, eyes no longer glowing and fangs gone. Stiles turned his back on the hound and stormed down the hill with the rest of the group, only vaguely listening to Boyd’s words.

“It’s Derek, right?”

“Yes.”

“Where will they take Aoibhe? The girl?”

“Through the Stargate. Kate likes to convert the hounds in her home.”

—— 

After two hours of walking in silence, Stiles made his way up to the front with Erica. She reached for his hand, but Stiles pulled his own away, keeping a decent distance between them. He didn’t deserve comfort, not now, not ever.

Even worse, soon after, Boyd and Derek joined them, walking side by side as though they were old friends. Boyd came over to Erica, flexing his gloved hand. “We’ve got less than an hour until the deadline, Reyes. How are we doing?”

“We lost a few when we reached the forest,” Erica said. “Some of them just ran off. I don’t think they trusted us.”

“They’ll be hunted and killed,” Derek said. “Anyone who does not exist to serve the Huntress and her Hunt is an enemy.”

Finally done with the cryptic bullshit, Stiles charged over to Derek and shoved at him. He barely stepped back a foot, but he stopped walking, and the entire train of people stopped with them. “What makes you so special then, huh? Nothing of the host survives, then where does that leave you? Why do you get to remember?”

Derek growled, and his eyes turned blue again, causing a shout from the people nearest them. Stiles refused to back up, and to his relief, Boyd came up to stand beside him.

“I am a Were,” he said, voice like iron. “Bred to serve. I am what your child, Aoibhe, will be. In exchange for her servitude, she will receive perfect health and a long life. She will be strong, her senses will be immaculate. She will be educated.” He paused. “She will be subjugated and abused. If she does not pass the tests given to her, she will become what happened to your wife. Kate’s hounds have no memory or mind. They know only obedience and slaughter.”

He turned and began to walk again, completely ignoring the sticks and rocks he was stepping over in bare feet.

It was Erica who asked, once they’d started moving again, “So, you passed the tests. Why did you do this?”

“I am allowed to keep my mind. I am allowed to witness the Huntress’ destruction of the worlds her court has conquered. You are the first to have powers that approach hers. You are strong. Maybe strong enough to destroy her.”

A loud humming made Stiles and the rest stop to look at the sky, where immense, covered chariots without anything to pull them were flying through the air toward the field where the Stargate was located.

Walking backwards, Boyd raised his voice. “Come on people! Let’s go!”

They picked up pace, and Stiles tried to usher people forward, pulling back into the crowd to make sure that those who needed an extra hand got it.

They got as far as the thinning of the trees, near where Dunbar’s team was meant to be waiting for them, before the ships came back. These were much smaller, the same kind of fighting ships that’d been on Saoghal. As they began to fire energy bolts, Stiles had to throw himself to the ground with a few others, hiding behind trees while those unlucky few in the open were blown to the ground.

This was something that Derek wouldn’t be able to help with, but Boyd was clearly trying his best with the glove he’d been given. One of the ships went down, smoking, behind a ridge, but the other didn’t look like it was remotely damaged. As it came around for another series of shots, Stiles peered through the branches.

“We’re sitting ducks, Boyd!” Erica shouted.

Then, the ship exploded, came crashing down against the ridge near the stargate, and exploded again. From the origin of the mystery blast came three people waving their arms.

“Dunbar?” Erica asked.

Boyd stood up and began to wave people onward. “Dunbar!”

SG-2 met them at the base of the hill and began to help people cross over it into the camp. Dunbar himself came over to where Boyd was, and Stiles followed behind.

“How many are there?” Boyd asked, propping himself against a rock to breathe.

Stiles stopped a few feet below to listen.

“A dozen, maybe more.” Dunbar reported. “They’re going back through the Stargate.”

“What about Aoibhe?”

“She’s with them. There’s something wrong with her. She—she wasn’t fighting.”

They made it to the edge of the field just as the last group of Cŵn Annwn were going through, grappling easily with the slight struggles of the prisoners. Even at this distance, Stiles could see Aoibhe. How she wasn’t being held at all, yet she stood close to the Cŵn Annwn.

Derek appeared beside him. “If she struggled too much. If she angered Kate, they might have converted her early.” He looked at Stiles. “She’s gone.”

If Stiles had had the option of falling to his knees, he would have.

Boyd ran past them, down the incline and into the field. Stiles could hear him shouting, could see Aoibhe turn and run straight into the Stargate, away from Boyd. Then the rest went through, the gate closed, and Stiles could move again.

“Did you see the symbols?” he shouted. “Boyd, did you see where they went?”

Boyd just shook his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter just kind of hurt my heart to write, one blow after another. Oof. Just one more chapter left!  
Translations in Gaelic:  
_Neach-gaoil_: beloved/relative  
_Sleuchd_: Kneel  
_Sguir dheth_: Stop it  
Translations in Welsh:  
_Penglinio_: Kneel


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woot, we have reached the end! Sorry this chapter's a little late, I was working on another WIP. Please enjoy some Derek & Stiles reluctant bonding.

Getting through the gate was more of an ordeal than they’d hoped, but once they were through, things went almost unfairly smoothly. Everything was taken out of their hands: the injured were cared for, the refugees they brought with them were given temporary housing, and they were dismissed for the night with orders to be ready for a debriefing.

Derek was taken into custody immediately, led away by an entire squad of guards despite Boyd’s arguing.

Like the last time he’d come through the gate, Stiles was at a loss for what to do. Only this time, there was no urge to go back through the gate and find Orlaith. There was just the agony of knowing she was dead, in every way that mattered. Her, and Aoibhe.

This time, Boyd wasn’t in a condition to coddle Stiles, and he left right away, heading for the locker rooms with eyes as dead as Stiles felt. Erica gave him a small smile, but left too, so eager to get out of her uniform she began to yank the jacket and straps off on her way out of the gate room.

For a while, Stiles stood there, on the ramp, gazing at the gate. He kind of hated it.

“You need another shower,” Isaac said from somewhere behind. He wasn’t too close, since his voice echoed a little in the big chamber. 

“Why do you keep coming to find me?” Stiles looked around to find him, leaning against another doorway like the thought of standing up straight had never occurred to him. What was he? Some kind of ghost?

Isaac shrugged. “Nothing better to do. Besides, it’s not really ‘finding’ if I watched you come through the gate, then stand here like a lunatic, staring at it.”

“Me staring at this gate is the whole reason all of this happened,” Stiles whispered, glancing at it again. He was tired of his eyes clouding up, of tears dripping down his cheeks, but at the same time he just wanted to lock himself up and actually cry until he felt better.

“Do you want me to braid your hair again? That helped last time.” Isaac offered.

Suddenly, Stiles just felt cold. “No. Where did they take the Cŵn Annwn?”

When Isaac didn’t answer right away, Stiles unclasped his cloak and pulled it off, draping it over his arm and stepping down the ramp. His approach made Isaac’s eyes widen.

“Hey, I’m not telling you so you can kill the guy.”

“I’m not gonna kill him,” Stiles muttered. “I just—just take me to him.”

Blessedly, Isaac didn’t argue anymore, just took Stiles through some halls and up a few levels in the elevator. It took so long to get here, Stiles couldn’t help wondering how Isaac even know where it was. There was no way he’d had time to go with the group and come back.

Finally, they were outside a door with a small window, a guard on either side.

“Refugees are on the other floor, Isaac,” one of them said.

Stiles frowned. “I’m not a refugee. I’m Doctor Stiles Stilinski of SG-1, and I need you to let me in to talk to the Cŵn Annwn.”

His correction made both guards shift in discomfort. “Uh, we’re not supposed to let anyone see the prisoner,” said the other.

“I just came from an alien planet, where I nearly died three times, and I need to talk to _this_ alien. Open the door. _Now!_” Stiles shouted.

The door popped open with a loud click, and Stiles didn’t waste time thanking either of the petrified guards. He just yanked the door open wide enough to slide inside, letting Isaac follow him.

It wasn’t much better than a prison cell. There was just the cot, a bare table with two chairs, a toilet and a sink. Derek was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, eyes closed. The blood hadn’t even been cleaned off his hands or face, leaving his skin streaked with shades of red.

From the back of his belt, Stiles pulled his knife. It was crude, but sharp, and he gripped it tight as he stepped forward.

Isaac yelped behind him. “You said you weren’t going to—”

“Are you here to kill me?” Derek asked, opening his eyes. He didn’t move.

“No.”

Derek’s eyes turned blue, and he tilted his head, hair falling over his jaw in thick locks. “You’re telling the truth. But you should, anyway. I am the reason your wife and child have been converted.”

Stiles shook his head. “She wasn’t my child. She was my sister by marriage. And I—I don’t care. I probably will tomorrow, but I don’t right now. I need your help.”

“What?”

“Cut my hair.”

Isaac made a noise of question. “What? If you want a haircut there’s a—”

Stiles waved his hand, looking sharply Isaac’s way. “No. I don’t want a haircut. I want him to cut my hair. There’s a difference. On my—on Saoghal, to have short hair is a sign of guilt and shame. Only the warriors cut their hair on purpose. Everyone else grows it, until for some reason, they shame themselves. Then their hair is cut, according to how shameful their actions were.” He turned back to Derek, who was now watching him with a slight squint. “You speak our language. You—you know what it means.”

Slowly, Derek nodded. With a fluid grace, he rose to his feet. “It’s the same. The Huntress, she likes our hair to be long. Unless we displease her. It’s one of her favorite punishments.”

“You didn’t call her that before. You said something else.”

“Kate.”

“She is supposed to be a goddess of the Celtic religions. Kate is a Greek name. For that matter, why are you named Derek?” For just the smallest moment, Stiles could push aside his grief, to pursue facts.

Derek didn’t move, didn’t so much as twitch or swing his hands. “She changes her name every few dozen years to match whatever language or culture she thinks is interesting. Now it is Kate. I am…I was her favorite. She gave me a new name when she chose me.”

Stiles tilted his own head. “Chose you. Like how she chose Aoibhe. You said you are what she will become. How long have you been with Kate?”

“Since she killed my family.”

The shock of his statement sent Stiles back toward the wall, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Isaac retreat as well. How Derek said that without so much as a hint of emotion was a mystery.

“You’re confused.”

Stiles nodded. “Uh, yes.”

“I will tell you, and I will cut your hair, but on a condition.”

“I can’t—”

“You must cut my hair as well.”

Looking down at his knife, Stiles squeezed the handle a little tighter. “Okay.”

Derek pulled out a chair and looked at Stiles blankly until he sat, then, without an ounce of effort, he pushed the chair back toward the table, and reached for Stiles’ hair. His fingers were gentle as they separated Stiles’ ruined braids and began to remove them properly.

“Kate came to my home when I was young. She chose me. My family attempted to protect me. Kate killed them. I went with Kate and was raised to her liking, including changing my name to something she liked better and taking away my old name. Most of the others that get chosen are trained to fly her ships or be her servants. Those that fail the tests become her guards, or die. I was—special. She taught me many languages, including yours.”

It was easier to deal with what was happening when Stiles closed his eyes and listened to the rustle of his own hair, along with the occasional click of a bead or feather being set on the table in front of him. “What do you mean, she ‘took away’ your old name?”

“I do not know it anymore.”

Stiles sucked in a breath. “Oh.”

A few moments later, he tried again. “What was your job, if not her guard? What exactly did you do for her?”

He opened his eyes when Derek’s hands stopped, and glanced to the side at where Isaac was standing, watching them both.

“_Anything,_” Derek said, switching to the language of Saoghal. “_Anything she wanted._”

Stiles slammed his eyes shut again against the image. “_Tha mi duilich. More sorry than I can say._”

“How far?” Derek asked. He hadn’t reached for Stiles’ knife, but there was a light pressure against Stiles’ hair as though it was being held away from his head.

Holding himself back from ducking his head, Stiles just said. “My wife and sister are dead, and it is my fault.”

The pressure moved much higher, and Stiles was grateful he didn’t have to fight for it. There was the distinct sensation of his hair being cut, his head getting lighter with each swipe of whatever Derek was using as a knife. It wasn’t fancy or stylish, just steady cuts over and over.

Finally, Derek stopped, and Stiles opened his eyes. Reaching up, he breathed out a single sob when his hair was barely an inch and a half long. “_Tapadh leat,_” he murmured. Then, he stood up and held out a hand for Derek to take the seat instead.

Stiles did his part in silence, going through Derek’s much longer hair and unbraided the dozens of little braids. They were intricate and complicated, making Stiles wonder who had been doing them for him. The options he came up with weren’t pleasant and he didn’t ask. Each bead he pulled out he placed in a pile opposite his own, watching it slowly grow. When Derek’s hair was finally cleaned out, he lifted a chunk small enough for him to cut with ease. “How far?”

“I have watched countless people die and have killed another countless under her orders.”

Nodding, Stiles hiked his knife up until there was a good two inches left. “_You have saved lives as well_.” Then, he cut. And cut. And cut, letting the hair fall to the floor and join his own. By the time he was done, Derek’s head looked choppy and unkempt, and Stiles had no doubt his own looked the same. But he felt a little lighter than before.

Isaac hadn’t spoken since the beginning, but he did once Stiles put the knife down and turned to look at him. “I know someone who can make the two of you look less like porcupines, if you’re willing to let someone else touch it now?”

Stiles met Derek’s eyes, and they both nodded. 

“Yeah, we can do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene right here was the _whole_ reason I wrote this fic. I just couldn't get it out of my head, and I'm terrible at writing just one scene. Thank you all for reading, and thanks to my beta [Madeline](https://pan-buck.tumblr.com). If you're interested in more of my thoughts on Sterek, come find me on [tumblr](https://asterekmess.tumblr.com/)!  
Translations:  
_Tha mi duilich_: I'm sorry  
_Tapadh leat_: Thank you


End file.
